Slashdot Mirror

Its like the holy grail of data analysis;

And just like the holy grail, it doesn't exist. Ever heard the expression "garbage in, garbage out"? Now imagine how that applies to a huge database of information compiled from diverse sources (including unverified, anonymous tips), where nothing is ever thrown away, and where nobody's quite sure what they're looking for.

The human brain is amazingly good at finding patterns - so good that it often finds patterns that aren't really there. Even with years of experience, training, and peer review, professional scientists are pretty bad at handling problems like confirmation bias, post hoc reasoning and the file-drawer effect - how are law enforcement agents likely to fare, with no statistical training and no effective oversight?

The people constructing these databases are falling into the trap of believing that more data means better data. That's an understandable mistake for people who are usually "data-poor", such as archaeologists, historians and detectives. But anyone from the "data-rich" sciences will tell you that once you have the data you face a whole new set of problems, and I very much doubt that counterterrorism officials, working in conditions of secrecy and under pressure to justify their jobs, are going to handle those problems in a rigorous way.

Please note that I'm not trying to say "police officers are too stupid to understand statistics" - scientists make these mistakes all the time, but they operate in an atmosphere of relative transparency and competition, where it's usually in some other scientist's interest to bring errors to light. The same conditions don't apply to government officials.

What does this mean? It means that false positives will lead to innocent people being monitored, blacklisted and imprisoned without trial, while false negatives will mean genuine threats go undetected. We urgently need to make our governments understand that more data doesn't necessarily lead to better decisions.

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:

1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
3. Therefore, C is true.

This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious.

It's not a fallacy to appeal to authority, only if they aren't an authority.

As I said time and time again that real expertise doesn't make the fallacy, but you say differently.

I said it was the only assumption in a given statement,

That's the problem, it was the only assumption in that logical argument.

not that it is my only assumption.

but it was your only assumption there.

And even if it was my only assumption -- and it certainly is not, as I also assume that math exists, for example, that 2+2 must always equal 4 -- it would not stand to reason that nothing other than life exists, which is what you said I assume.

I didn't say you assumed that only life exists in all parts of the world, but rather, only for that argument.

You now make another stab at logic:

How do you get to liberty [from life existing?]

Obvious deduction. How do you NOT?

I already explained that you need more assumptions and deductions, which you failed to provide. It's not obvious. If it were obvious, you'd have made a two-column proof and the debate would be settled.

Indeed, it is entirely irrational to come to any OTHER conclusion.

Actually, it would be rational to generalize it and say that if you exist, then at least one person exists if you have the property of being a person.

Oh, wait, is that another conclusion? I'm just joking here though, I know you actually mean that I couldn't come to the conclusion that liberty doesn't exist from life existing. You meant to say it would be irrational to come to the opposite conclusion.

But then, you just fell to the false dichotomy, which you earlier accused me of doing. Way to go. Actually, just like my argument wasn't really hurt by the accusation of false dichotomy when taken in its best light (which you fail to do in order to understand the points of your opponent), if I merely break the dichotomy into what you actually meant, and make a reasonable response, my argument is ten times stronger, since it's anticipating the response.

But of course, you're just a troll, disinterested in a reasonable discussion. You just want to "win points", even if the arguments aren't sound.

Guess what? People just think you're an asshole when you do that.

If nothing else, liberty must be deduced by process of elimination.

The more accurate term is proof by contradiction, or reductio ad absurdum, since you have said that depriving one of liberty also deprives them of life, which _contradicts_ the earlier premise of life (this also falls to the fallacy I'll mention below, as well as your reductio ad absurdum arguement here).

That is not necessary, but it would stand just the same. If I exist, and I know I exist, and am capable of controlling my own thoughts and acts -- all necessarily true, both by deduction and observation -- that necessarily means I have the liberty to think and act as I choose.

This Cartesian/rationalist converse is just as pointless as his, but I'll assume what you say here is true just because it's actually incomplete. All you've shown, if somebody buys your argument, (which I don't, because I don't think you actually control your own thoughts as completely as you think you do,

Oh yes... I've discussed the scientific consensus once in this story already. As a matter of fact, this is the second time I've linked to it already.... It seems all you guys are able to say is "scientific consensus" like a bunch of flat-earthers.

Oh yes... I've discussed the scientific consensus once in this story already. As a matter of fact, this is the second time I've linked to it already.... It seems all you guys are able to say is "scientific consensus" like a bunch of flat-earthers.

Oh yes... I've discussed the scientific consensus once in this story already. As a matter of fact, this is the second time I've linked to it already.... It seems all you guys are able to say is "scientific consensus" like a bunch of flat-earthers. Hey, everybody knows it's true, therefore it is!! That's called an appeal to belief and it doesn't make your argument any stronger.

That's called an ad hominem attack, in case you didn't know.

That's called an ad hominem attack, in case you didn't know.

You really need to read this document:

"42 informal logical fallacies explained"

It's at:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

So far in two posts almost every point you made has been a logical fallacy (well I didn't read all of your first post, just enough to see your first logical fallacy).

These have been:

* Ad Hominem: First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting)

    -- You committed this logical fallacy when you attacked me personally

* Ad Hominem Tu Quoque: This fallacy is committed when it is concluded that a person's claim is false because 1) it is inconsistent with something else a person has said or 2) what a person says is inconsistent with her actions.

    -- You committed this logical fallacy when you questioned the validity of Al Gore's position on global warming because of the personal behaviors (that you misrepresent, to boot) of Al Gore

* False Dilemma: A False Dilemma is a fallacy in which a person uses the following pattern of "reasoning":

      1. Either claim X is true or claim Y is true (when X and Y could both be false).
      2. Claim Y is false.
      3. Therefore claim X is true.

  -- You committed this logical fallacy when you gave a false choice between "freedom" and the "environment", as if they are mutually exclusive

There may be more, but I didn't read your first post so I can't say for sure.

My point: if you want to take the time to write down your arguments on such issues, it would behoove you to study logical fallacies so that you could train yourself to notice when you are committing one. Those of us who can spot them, easily do so when presented with posts like yours, and it's really not worth anyone's time to discuss falsehoods that are so easily detected.

The People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Its government is officially atheist, which viewed religion as emblematic of feudalism and foreign colonialism. Religious belief or practice was banned because it was regarded as backward and superstitious by some of the communist leaders, from Vladimir Lenin to Mao Zedong, who had been critical of religious institutions.

Um, no.

Ahhh,

The Ad Hominem.

Ron Paul is a lunatic with damn little understanding of history, economics and politics.

Ron Paul may not be an unequaled sage; there are most likely students of history, economics, and politics who are superior to him.

These people are not, however, in our government. Obama is a toll. Hillary Clinton, though quite bright, fundamentally doesn't understand the long-term strategic mis-steps the U.S. has made in the past 50 years. That being said, both Obama and Clinton have a much better grip on reality that the rest (as in non-Paul) of the Republican slate. McCain, Huckabee, Giulani, and the rest have no clue on basic things like immigration, economics, foreign policy, and religion.

Does Paul say stupid things some times? Yes. However, if you do some research, you'll see that he is far more knowledgable about the issues he speaks about that his contemporaries, and many of the things that he advocates are sane, sound policy decisions.

For example, the DEA, and the drug war, is a ridiculous mess. If the only good thing that came out of a Paul Presidency was the end of the drug war, the U.S. would be a much better place.

The same is true of the IRS, which is also a complete mess. Keep in mind that Paul who advocate a replacement such as a sales tax, which is the sort of mechanism that European economics use (they call it a VAT).

Our government has gone through large scale reformations before, and survived. Recently, even; look at the Department of Homeland security, which has completely reoriented the operations of domestic law enforcement, and the USCIS, which is a newish entity replacing the INS.

I, for one, am willing to trade the possibility of the free market failing in providing economic equality in exchange for strengthening of our civil liberties, the end of the drug war, a return to a more conservative foreign policy, pursuit of a balanced budget and trade, and a complete overhaul of our insane tax system.

Who are you to call me a lunatic, and why are the risks involved in moving to what I believe to be a "better" government any worse than the shitstorm the democrats and republicans are currently driving us towards? The vast majority of the electorate has delved into the issues far less than I have, and the vast majority of the congress, and every _other_ lunatic running for President, is a good deal less informed than Dr. Paul.

Either you are a hopeless optimist, and like the direction this country is going in, or you've become so conservative and a afraid of change that any large-scale reorientation of the government is terrifying to you.

Hell, I'd excuse people like you if you had a candidate who would restore our liberties without pursuing radical economics changes, however, given the current slate of possibilities on both sides of the aisle, no one other than Kucinich and Paul defend civil liberties that way they need to be defended.

+5 insightful? Hi mods, I think you meant to select "offtopic." The politicization of every issue makes me ill.

Found this on the WoW forums, thought it was good enough to pass along.

Hole #1: The 'community driven tools used to police Warden' mentioned in the article are not designed to 'police' Warden. They are designed to map out every action Warden performs on your system for the purposes of bypassing Warden. I'd post the reference links here, but that's a suspendable offense. You can fairly easily navigate through the original post for links to the software developer's site(s).

Hole #2: The 'privacy' issue is being raised due to the capacity for misuse present in the Warden software. The reality is that someone would have to rebuild Warden with a new algorithm specifically designed to snoop private data. Note that the original author makes no comment on how a developer would go about doing this, only that it could be done.

Hole #3: You have already given Blizzard enough information to steal your identity, ruin your credit, disrupt your financial stability, etc. What other possible information could they need to gather from your machine to ruin you?

Hole #4: The final blow to this argument... The only reason this issue is so 'big' in the 'community' is because the software developers have not (yet) found a way to bypass the new security measures. Warden has been through dozens of upgrades since it was released, but the 'community' didn't make a peep because the changes were visible to them, they could continue bypassing the security measures. These people don't care about Warden being on your machine, or what Warden can do with your information. They care about the fact that they can't bypass Warden anymore, and that's why the posts are going up all over the place.

Do yourself a favor, read up on Logical Fallacies, here's a good link to get you started. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/. #36 describes a 'Red Herring' argument, uniquely applicable in this situation. To be specific, there is no security implication as Blizzard is going to be performing the same scans that they have been for the last two years. If you have trusted them this long there is no reason to not trust them now. The true issue is the transparency of the Warden product, which has the bot-makers all butthurt.

- Curacao, Ravenholdt realm

I've seen enough anti-Semitic monsters on Usenet that I don't take anything for granted. These people do exist, and do use the Internet to get their lies and venom out there. Matt Giwer is probably one of the most infamous, and one that I've crossed paths with a few times.

This is the classical fallacy of division (See, for example, http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/division.html). Note that it is *possible* that an *individual* smoker might be immune to the harmful effects of smoking, but this is clearly not a feature of the group of all smokers. Therefore, your claim that this is a logical argument is the actual problem.

Now, if none of your readers identified this correctly, I would argue that your experiment failed. I require my students to be able to identify such mistakes in news articles they read for class.

just having someone in your house doesn't mean that when you open fire you're defending yourself. You can use all the bold and the suggestive phrasing you want

A straw man is a disconnected argument. If I said that Toyota Corporation was behind it, that would be a straw man. Try not to trip on all those big words; it's a counterexample, plain and simple.

I grew up

Sure doesn't look that way from here.

look very closely at your own system before attacking ours

My nationality is irrelevant. Just because you can point to another country and say "They're bad too" doesn't make yours any better. That's an appeal to common practice.

Step one is admitting you have a problem. You obviously haven't done that.

Sorry to be harsh, but I'm not going to bother replying.

What a great way to kill a debate.

Your post is a incoherent mess, full of half-truths, truthiness and fill.

That is an easy statement for you, since you decline to elaborate which portions you consider to be "half-truths". Gosh, it almost sounds like Microsoft yelling about the Linux community violating patents ... which they refuse to identify. Wow. Your trustworthiness is much higher than mine, I can certainly see that. Thank you for the lecture. You sir, are a real inspiration for other people.

A debate is all about sharing knowledge and views. If you disagree with me, fine, explain why. And provide information that could potentially make me change my mind.

Pretty much every sentence in it is either factually incorrect,

Which specific sentences are factually incorrect?

an arbitrary assumption,

Which specific sentences contain arbitrary assumptions?

logically inconsistent

Which specific sentences are logically inconsistent?

or not responding to the points they purport to respond to.

Which specific sentences are not responding to the points they purport to respond to?

I'd suggest you learn about logical fallacies and logical argument in general. Ideally, learn about the scientific method also.

Ok, so I took the time to read the pages at all the four links you provided.

Your link to the definition of Truthiness is mostly an accusation, and an insult. I can only speculate about your reason for degrading the debate to such a low level, but my guess is that you try to point out, that you feel my previous statements are insufficiently supported, and lacks evidence or facts. While I agree that I have not provided a ton of external links, you seem to make the faulty assumption, that lack of evidence automatically turns everything I said into "Truthiness". The assumption is flawed, because lack of evidence in itself can not be used to classify the original statement as faulty - only as unproven. If I state that "10+10=20" but fail to support that with evidence, the statement is not faulty by default. It is only unsupported/unproven. A fair action would then be to ask for clarification or evidence - or provide contradiction evidence if possible.

Your link to the definition of fallacies appears to be an attempt to claim that every argument I have made which did not fit the "truthiness" category, are flawed arguments (arguments in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support). Since you refuse to identify which arguments you believe are fallacies it is a little difficult for me to provide additional reasoning/premises for them - don't you think? (Btw, the Wiki on Fallacy was more helpful to me than the link you provided).

Your link to the definition of Logical arguments was an interesting read, but really does nothing for this debate. You may point out that my language or way of explaining myself is of insufficient quality (English is not my first language - sorry), and that I should attempt to make every one of my arguments strictly valid according to the definition of Logical arguments.

That approach is wrong for several reasons. First (and most important) of all, because our debate is not strictly scientific in nature. Our debate contains large portions of personal views, sociological, psychological, ethical and moral perspectives. For that reason, it can not be conducted if all arguments were to follow strict logic. Many (most?) arguments in debates such as these follow the principles of a "civil debate" (see:

Sorry to be harsh, but I'm not going to bother replying. Your post is a incoherent mess, full of half-truths, truthiness and fill. Pretty much every sentence in it is either factually incorrect, an arbitrary assumption, logically inconsistent or not responding to the points they purport to respond to. I'd suggest you learn about logical fallacies and logical argument in general. Ideally, learn about the scientific method also.

---

Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.

at the expense of the rights of people?

It's OK to be importing an unprecedented amount of Chinese goods and exploit the cheap labor for every other aspect of the western economy, but Google is evil because they set up a satellite search service that institutes the required Chinese national policies?

Strawman argument. You brought up cheap Chinese goods and labor, not I. I am in no way defending the exploitation of the chinese worker.

Since the suppression of information is happening regardless of Google's presence, that should clarify that the root of the suppression is not due to U.S. companies agreeing to Chinese government demands, but is the Chinese government itself.

Fact: Google actively filters information on behalf of the Chinese government. The great firewall of China was built with American technology. Google is a part of that.

Frankly, it's also better for U.S. interests to have a "bubble" of Google servers that have a set of blacklisted/censored material for the time being, instead of watching Google lose out entirely in the fastest growing economy to the Chinese domestic engines (e.g. Baidu)

If you'll refer back to the link I posted, you'll see that at least a few members of the US Congress do not believe Google's behavior is in the best interest of the US. Chris Smith went so far as to propose a law to make Google's actions there illegal here. (Of course, his hypocritical solution allows for the filtering of content in the United States to continue, yet would make filtering the exact same material in China illegal.)

In game theory, it seems you would consider the situation a deadlock. I would consider it a prisoner dilemma. I believe human rights are more valuable than money. You must consider money to be more important than human rights. The mods seem to agree with you. Perhaps you and the mods would like to sell your rights... or is it only the rights of other people that you consider to be less important than money?

These politicians who (while it was a popular subject) wanted to crucify Google don't have any qualms about continuing to support China by importing their cheap goods and exploiting the cheap labor costs.

You can thank almighty capitalism for that. Chinese currency manipulation is largely to blame for the "cheap" goods and labor. What follows that is inevitable in a free market. Spineless politicians are more deserving of blame in regards to "one way" free trade with China. In effect, China is exploiting loopholes in a debt based global economy in an attempt to dominate said global economy.

...and here we see the myths in action.

1 - stop watching TV shows and movies. They can be really bad models of a reality-based world. Examples: those 'wave your arms to operate a computer' operating systems in sci-fi films would mess up your shoulders in a day; you can't accurately shoot a .44 Magnum at anything further than fifty feet away; and a stoic person that won't give the codes to the nuclear device isn't going to spill his guts just because Jack Bauer yells "TELL ME WHAT THE CODES ARE" in his face.

2 - If you're going to live in fear, and then define your fear as a reason to repeat a f#cked-up experiment in US foreign relations, you're not in the reality-based world in the first place.

3 - one of your sentences shows just how messed up your 'thinking' is:

you can pretend he didn't have weapons of mass destruction but what if he did?

a - "you can pretend he didn't have weapons of mass destruction". Let's look at that. In relation to the 9/11 Commission Report that said... HE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. There's no "pretending" about it. No matter how much Rick Santorum and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter LIED TO YOU, REPEATEDLY LIED TO YOU, you are still gullible enough to repeat the lie as truth. And then...

b - you say "but what if he did?". You just said OTHER PEOPLE WERE PRETENDING HE DIDN'T HAVE THEM. And then you ACKNOWLEDGE that he doesn't have them because you try to Appeal to Emotion, wondering what would happen if he DID have them in an alternative universe.

We should invade somewhere "in case" someone could do something to us? Is this the [f]right wing modern version of Reds Under The Beds (Arabs In The Attic)? How messed up to you have to be, mentally, to think "the best form of defense is attack, and the best form of attack is surprise"...? That's what mental people do, you do realize that, right? Mad people attack random people in subway stations and on the streets because "God told them to do it" or "they're all out to get me". And you use that as... what? A viable political opinion?

When did nutso-frigging-bazoo count as a political opinion. I'm going to call a spade a spade. You're mental. Get help.

The article summary posits a non-analogous argument ("using a program that could violate copyright law is about as illegal as leaving your back door unlocked") which doesn't properly reflect the plaintiff's position nor the objective facts of the dispute (a false analogy in this case, not a straw man fallacy). Setting up an anonymous file sharing device, and then not checking or knowing if illegal material has been stored there by others, is not like leaving your door unlocked. For a moment, let's assume it's not the emotionally laden and Slashdot sacred material of copyrighted music which was stored on the PC of a hapless KaZaa user. Suppose the material stored had been child pornography embedded stenographically with secret messages from Ossama bin Laden transmitted between members of Al-Qaeda. It's likely that no court would send the morons to jail, right? Probably. So the outrage might be justified.

However, the cause is not served by this fallacious argument, which appears frequently in Slashdot discussions, typically unchallenged. Transliterated from cyber to meat space, it's more like leaving the door to your house unlocked, for months, and ignoring the traffic that comes and goes while a 3rd party sets up a meth lab in your basement, or counterfeiting operation, or child pornography operation, or bomb-vest making and Al-Qaeda nut job brainwashing factory, for months. If you are an absentee landowner, you might not be held responsible, but if you're simply ignoring the fact that other people are using your property for illegal activity, then you're likely to be found liable to some degree. Hmm... it's really more like somebody set up a CD piracy print shop in your garage. It's exactly like that. You would probably go to jail.

Now, it might well be the case that copy right law run amok. I'm only speaking to a particular fallacious argument which one sees frequently on Slashdot, and now in this article summary.

Let me remind you that English is a living language, constantly evolving. Words mean what people think they mean. If most people think CPU means the computer's case, then that's what it means. To correct them is closed minded pedantry.

At least that's what they tell me when I inform people about begging the question.

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.

Merely calling somebody names does not make an ad hominem attack, you insensitive clod!

See? Rude, wrong, perhaps, but not an ad hominem attack! Now, had I instead responded to your claim of `that was an ad hominem' with `Oh yeah? Well, we can't trust anything you say, because you're a first poster!', then THAT would have been closer to an ad hominem.

The BBC 'gets' the money but don't forget that their program production is mostly outsourced.

Which is why I said no other organization directly gets funding from the licence fee. Most importantly, they are the only broadcasting organization that gets money from the fee (the other broadcasters don't generally supply content to the BBC as outsourcers).

Note that *many* countries have a license which helps pay for some public service and local TV.

So? You're using the logical fallacy of appeal to common practice. Just because a lot of other countries have some form of licence fee does not make it morally correct or justifiable.

I have nothing against public broadcasting. What I do have something against is the way that it's funded at the moment. The licence fee and it's enforcement is a morally reprehensible way to fund a service that should be benefiting all. If anything, the people best served by the BBC's mandate to "inform, educate and entertain" are the ones for whom the licence fee is more of a burden.

The TV Licence makes as much sense as a Reading Licence would, where people would need a licence to buy books just to support public libraries.

Your logic is flawed. In fact it is riddled with several logical fallacies:

1. Black-or-White Fallacy - Either you stop can stop all murderers, or you can't stop any murderers. WRONG - you can stop SOME murderers.
2. Composition Fallacy - Certain murderers are this way, so all murderers are this way. WRONG - some murderers are in the heat of passion searching around their closet for a gun, and might calm down if they don't find one. Others plan for years to carry out international acts of war.
3. Red Herring Fallacy - Bring in something that has nothing to do with the topic at hand to draw attention away from the original issue. What the hell does 9/11 have to do with this??!?

LS

Your logic is flawed. In fact it is riddled with several logical fallacies:

1. Black-or-White Fallacy - Either you stop can stop all murderers, or you can't stop any murderers. WRONG - you can stop SOME murderers.
2. Composition Fallacy - Certain murderers are this way, so all murderers are this way. WRONG - some murderers are in the heat of passion searching around their closet for a gun, and might calm down if they don't find one. Others plan for years to carry out international acts of war.
3. Red Herring Fallacy - Bring in something that has nothing to do with the topic at hand to draw attention away from the original issue. What the hell does 9/11 have to do with this??!?

LS

I don't know which to choose from....

Description of Composition:http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallaci es/composition.html
or
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc. html
or
Questionable Cause:: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/questiona ble-cause.html

or maybe even slipperly slope - so many to choose from.

I don't know which to choose from....

Description of Composition:http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallaci es/composition.html
or
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc. html
or
Questionable Cause:: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/questiona ble-cause.html

or maybe even slipperly slope - so many to choose from.

I don't know which to choose from....

Description of Composition:http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallaci es/composition.html
or
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/post-hoc. html
or
Questionable Cause:: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/questiona ble-cause.html

or maybe even slipperly slope - so many to choose from.

This is an Appeal to Pity.

Yes, we all know the RIAA kills puppies and causes gout. But is it too much to ask to find articles about the RIAA that simply tell the facts as they are about them? They're bad enough, and they'll stand on their own.

I would reply to your post, but judging from the text, it seems like you're one of the pathetically uniformed, still spouting the same crap that has been disproved time after time since 2003.

By the way, excellent use of a hybrid Straw-man + Red Herring Fallacy. I assume that if we had invaded the Sudan for humanitarian relief, you would have fully signed on to the Iraq war, right?

I would reply to your post, but judging from the text, it seems like you're one of the pathetically uniformed, still spouting the same crap that has been disproved time after time since 2003.

By the way, excellent use of a hybrid Straw-man + Red Herring Fallacy. I assume that if we had invaded the Sudan for humanitarian relief, you would have fully signed on to the Iraq war, right?

Did you come here for an argument or did you want to debate something? If you want an argument, you are doing a good job, but if you want to debate something you are not. You are simply using multiple ad hominem's (Linux users are like creationists, Linux users are assholes, etc), appeals to belief (the "linux community" are all zealots), and probably a bunch of other fallacies that I am too lazy to look up.

Did you come here for an argument or did you want to debate something? If you want an argument, you are doing a good job, but if you want to debate something you are not. You are simply using multiple ad hominem's (Linux users are like creationists, Linux users are assholes, etc), appeals to belief (the "linux community" are all zealots), and probably a bunch of other fallacies that I am too lazy to look up.

Any scandal that erupts out of this is largely Ad Hominem. That doesn't mean it's hostile, but it is flawed.

Since you bring up logical fallacies, consider that Essjay's phony credentials were concocted to trap the Wikipedia community in one as well: argumentum ad verecundium, appeal to authority. Because the input of experts is given more weight by the listener, people try to come across as experts to make their arguments more authoritative than they really are. A common example is celebrity endorsements. This case, however, is more insidious in that the credentials are not obviously irrelevant, but rather appear genuine and can fool even a rational listener into believing the claims.

The appeal to Essjay's false authority has given his statements unmerited weight (listen to me, I'm a PhD!). Now they will be viewed with particular skepticism (don't listen to him, he's a known liar!). I can only hope that in the end, the effects will offset, with whatever falsehoods he managed to spread cleaned up and any worthwhile statements he made along the way standing on their own merit.

The monitoring you are afraid of isn't practicle with the technology put into practice

Wrong. Thumb drives and GPS units are a whole lot less expensive than a $40,000 police cruiser and a $45,000 a year cop. You can pull it off to the tune of a few hundred bucks. Scrap one car and two cops from the budget and monitor thousands of citizens for the same price.

-- they have to be able to retrieve the device after planting it, which isn't possible in the "random placement" scenarios you are so afraid of (as they don't have a known location to retreive the device).

Yeah, it's not like they have a database that correlates something like a "license tag" to a physical address. The cops wouldn't even know where to begin searching for the vehicle so they could retrieve the planted thumb drive on it. <sarcasm />

The fact that technology enables them to be better at tracking a suspect is irrelevant -- they're not gathering information that they couldn't obtain in some other fashion.

How they follow you is mostly beside the point, but it is not totally irrelevant.

Arguing that the police should have efficiency constraints is not a valid justification for requiring a warrant.

You took three paragraphs to get to your actual point? You must love to hear yourself talk. I'm ok with them using new technology all they want... with a warrant. You obviously don't care. The government's argument is "Cops sometimes follow people around in their cars without a warrant and that's ok, so cops following people around 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for months on end without a warrant is ok too." That's a fallacy of composition and the judge just bought it hook, line, and sinker. We'll if it's ok for the cops, it must be ok for me too. I can go make a cheap rig and stalk anyone I want legally, because hey, it's not like I couldn't legally follow the person around in my car.

Nice slippery slope there asswipe.

The monitoring you are afraid of isn't practicle with the technology put into practice -- they have to be able to retrieve the device after planting it, which isn't possible in the "random placement" scenarios you are so afraid of (as they don't have a known location to retreive the device).

The fact that technology enables them to be better at tracking a suspect is irrelevant -- they're not gathering information that they couldn't obtain in some other fashion.

Arguing that the police should have efficiency constraints is not a valid justification for requiring a warrant. You would be about as successful arguing that police shouldn't be able to use patrol cars, because it allows a single officer to "monitor" a greater area of the city.

Nice straw man there dickhead. No, I'm presenting the fact that it would be much easier for the police to do what the judge warned against using this methodology. This is nothing like a policeman tailing you in a traditional fashion. It could be placed on your vehicle and log your location for months on end. How the hell is that like a policeman following you in his car? Right, it isn't. Is it feasible for the police to 'tail' you for months on end for no reason? It is now not only feasible, and cheap, but thanks to the asswipe judge, completely legal without a warrant.

It will be amusing when some politically motivated cop decides to plant one of these little bugs on a politician's car. It'll be fun hearing about midnight visits to the redlight districts just before an election. Consequently, the legislature's first order of business after that election will be to outlaw this practice in bold face black letter language in the law books. The problem is they will probably only outlaw the practice in regards to "government officials" or some such and leave the citizenry out in the cold.

So, in 30 minutes you read that whole (long) article, examined the vast amount of research documented in the footnotes ( you couldn't claim "poorly researched" otherwise) , ignored all of that documentation which *you* just claimed was "poorly researched" (you couldn't claim "unsubstantiated" otherwise) and then go on to claim that, due to you contradicting yourself in one simple sentence, he must be some wacko conspiracy theorist?

Wow, you're truly amazing. Not only do you make no sense (you'd have given a couple dozen examples if you were actually trying to look like you make sense given that you're slagging thousands of hours of *substantiated, documented research* with one ignorant sentence) but you demonstrate yourself to be an idiot. Nice!

The simple fact that your entire post was one big ad Hominem Doesn't prove you wrong, but it does show that you know *nothing* that could back up whatever it is that you think your point might be.

My opinion is that you don't even have a clue what point you're trying to make since that would involve logic, and you've completely failed that.

Honestly, even on /., I can't think of anybody who's ever looked as stupid as you do right now :-)
OK, Taco with the iPod thing, but other than that...

You seem pretty dense, so I'll spell it out for you. There is an upper limit to how much heat your CO2 blanket can catch. When CO2 was at 7000 PPM (compared to our current 370PPM), the global mean temp was only 22C. 22C is pretty much the highest it has ever gotten in the past 500,000,000 years or so. I'm pretty sure mankind could survive at 22C. It would be different, but mass extinction of the human race doesn't seem likely. Take your warm-blooded mammal-planet straw man elsewhere. Thanks.

But even if information is from an unpaid source, it can't be assumed that it's not just as inaccurate or misleading or incomplete. And you can't just assume that paid information is always less inaccurate. You're getting into the realm of genetic fallacy

You'd have to be daft to to allow javascript on any random site.

First, that's a terrible argument. See here for an explanation why.

Second, why do you believe this? What is the worst thing a random piece of JavaScript can really do? Steal the cookie with my login info for Slashdot?

If you use Internet Explorer, I will agree with you. I would even go further and not allow anything through to that browser from any random site, other then maybe images.

But with Firefox or just about any another browser, these types of things happen VERY, VERY infrequently. When they do, I follow tech news and will in most cases be patched before I ever come across the exploit in the wild. The hassle of having to re-enable JavaScript all the time isn't worth the "risk" for users like me.

There once was a country called Zimbabwe.

This is the fallacy of Misleading Vividness. You are using the example of Zimbabwe's disasterous and ill-considered land redistribution scheme to cast an ill light on the concept of any form of redistribution. This is equivalent to someone saying in an abortion debate, "Pro-life advocates belief in the sanctitiy of human life," and you replying, "Eric Rudolph murdered doctors," in an attempt to discredit pro-life advocates as a populace.

Zimbabwe's wealth redistribution program is a disaster. However, that doesn't mean that programs like Medicare, public education, emergency services, etc. are equally harmful to a country as a whole. You argument is almost Godwin-esque in the level to which you find the single worst example you can think of to try to discredit an opposing side and doesn't significantly add anything to this discussion.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/hasty-gen eralization.html

that CS degree was probably a little too light on the "science" to really admit you to the conversation.

Yet another logical fallacy. You were asked a direct question and you ignored it. I'll assume that means you don't know the answer to the question. In which case, you're shouting at someone for being ignorant when you yourself don't know. Maybe your degree was a little light on the science, because if you did study environmental science, you certainly don't seem to know very much about it.

I just know that when I see people complaining about "6500 ft^2 McMansions" (as if we all have a responsibility to live in 20 ft^2 environmentally-friendly cardboard boxes)

Look up these logical fallacies and see if they sound familiar:
False Dilemma and Straw Man.